Town Manager Dan Holler’s performance review concluded Wednesday night’s Mammoth Town Council meeting. No bonuses for Dan: he’s tapped out on pay, having reached the Town’s ceiling for Managers. When bouncing around the Zoom screen for comment, the following opinions of Holler’s performance were expressed by Council.
Wentworth: Quite excellent
Stapp: Excellent
Sauser: I don’t know how many people could have taken on the burden of the hours Dan’s taken on since Covid began … We’re lucky to have him as an asset in our community.
Salcido: Strong leader.
Rea: No comment

What’s interesting about all this shower of compliments is that it took place during the same meeting that Community Development Director Sandra Moberly dropped the following bombshell:
Remember the $200,000 the Town spent to acquire a 1/4-acre of dirt on Joaquin with the idea it would build six units of affordable housing on it? That was part of the “The Parcel can’t happen fast enough so let’s do something, anything now to ingratiate ourselves with the voters and convince them we’re people of ACTION” political spin.
The Town then budgeted an additional $3 million to build those six units.
On Wednesday, Moberly informed Council that the lot could not accommodate six units. They’ll have to settle for four. Hmm. $3.2 million divided by four = $800,000 apiece. And Moberly projected the units would be offered at 150% of AMI (Area Median Income). Not sure whether they’d be for sale or rental units. *150% AMI = household income of approximately $120,000/year for a family of four.
For comparison’s sake, last August, the Pacific Companies (developer of The Parcel) provided the following estimate. Pacific told Council it would need to subsidize/fork over $95,000 apiece in order to build for-sale units offered to those in the 120-150% AMI demographic.
Why spend $800,000 on eight units if you can spend $800,000 on one?
Neither Holler nor Council said one word in response to Moberly’s staff report. Except for Mayor Salcido, who patted herself and Council on the back for moving forward on nine units (four projected at Joaquin and five as a resuilt of the Town’s “Bridge” program to identify and purchase units on the open market and then deed restrict them before turning them over and offering them to local workforce buyers.
This strikes me as somewhat clever.
The Joaquin project strikes me as obscene.
What’s also obscene is Council using Mammoth Lakes Housing as a punching bag over the past few years and implying that the Town is super-capable of doing things a lot more efficiently … and now, MLH’s 11-unit Glass Apartment development (which was originally priced at $6.2 million and targeted for those making 80-100% of AMI or approximately $75,000 for a family of four) is a hands-down vastly superior deal to the Town’s initial effort. .
Phase One of the Parcel did not cost the Town much out of pocket because Mono County tossed in funds it had received from the State’s “No Place Like Home” program (from Proposition 2 passed in 2018).
Phase Two promises no such windfall.
It is estimated the Town will have to come up with $5 million out of pocket for Phase Two (160 units).
I wonder if anyone has begun funding that savings account? Doubtful. But golf claps all around for Mr. Holler.
Be “Quite Excellent” to Each Other. And party on, Dan!

Mammoth Lakes Police Chief Al Davis did confirm this week that he is indeed running for Mono County Sheriff against incumbent Ingrid Braun. I suspect this will be an uphill battle for Chief Davis. I consulted a few Vegas oddsmakers who set the over/under on his projected take of the vote at 37%.

Finance Director/Airp[ort Manager Rob Patterson provided an Air Service Update at Wednesday’s meeting, The highlights:

Advanced Airlines (into Mammoth)
Burbank and Hawthorne have been lagging but advance bookings have been picking up for February and March – we have scaled back to 8 passenger King Air planes for Tuesday and Wednesday which has also unfortunately brought the prices up due to less available seats
Carlsbad continues to perform very well with good load factors and revenue.

United Airlines (into Bishop)
Denver – pacing 964 round trips ahead of 2019-20 which is by far our winningest market. These are people coming from the points East, staying longer (midweek), spending more, and having less impact (cleaning etc.)
San Francisco – pacing 1465 round trips behind 2019-20 – Good news is February bookings have jumped 22% since last week and March also saw a 25% jump. .
Los Angeles – pacing 3860 round trips behind 2019-20 – Similar good news is February jumped 22% since last week for bookings in February and March went up 33%.

United Airlines has still seen ZERO cancellations due to weather in Bishop although there were four cancellations in January due to crew availability (2) and aircraft availability (2)  

Advanced Airline saw no cancellations or diversions in January – a sign of balmy weather.

Looking ahead, Advanced Airlines is contracted for service from  June 16-September 12 on Thursdays, Fridays, Sundays and Mondays serving Carlsbad and Hawthorne. 

United Airlines is still TBD but may operate mid-June to early September – San Francisco only. 

And from Hartley’s desk … some reflections on the Brian Flores story – Flores is a former head coach of the Miami Dolphins who is suing the NFL for racial discrimination in hiring practices.

Brian Flores claims he was offered $100,000 per game to lose games. That is some priceless s%$t. Why? Because having a worse record would get the Dolphins a better future draft pick. Flores claims he refused to lose and the owner has been mad since he won 5 games that first year. Funny thing is the owner should be mad at the GM. The Dolphins still had a high draft pick but  the GM chose Tua Tagovailoa over Justin Herbert. Dumbass. Meanwhile, Flores’ coaching record over the past two years was 19-14. For comparison’s Bill Belichick’s record was 17-16. And Flores had beaten Belichick three times in a row. 

Nick Wright had an excellent analogy. He talked about how the NFL is 70% black and currently has one black head coach. One. Then he said what if there were 27 black coaches in the NHL. The NHL has 95% white players, so what if 95% of the coaches were black? What would folks say?

I will continue to say about white owners hiring white coaches -they hire what they relate to. Billionaires ain’t hanging out with black folks unless they’ve got money. And even then, billionaires still aren’t hanging out with Jay Z and Dre who are building insane wealth. 

So until black folks start buying teams and getting higher level front office jobs, the league won’t be hiring blacksin any meaningful way. You see in Minnesota they hired a black GM. He’s favoring several WHITE coaches to hire himself. Is that because he wants it that way or because the owner told him YOU’RE ENOUGH QUOTA FOR OUR FRONT OFFICE. So even with GMs in place its tough. The Dolphins GM is black and he sacrificed Brian Flores. That’s some black on black crime. We will see what shakes out on this case but at the least the Giants and Dolphins got some ‘splainin to do. The Giants have been around 100 years and have never had a black head coach.